Ferguson: Two stories
By Mrs. Walter Ferguson
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Richberg backs U.S. control of labor policies
Attorney urges post-war action to restore free enterprise
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If their jobs are waiting –
Soldier-vote issue raised in NLRB union elections
Question is whether ex-workers overseas should get ballots; Pittsburgh case is example
By Fred W. Perkins, Pittsburgh Press staff writer
Washington –
While Congress quarrels over votes for soldiers, the National Labor Relations Board is bothered by a similar problem…
Should men and women in the services vote in elections under NLRB auspices to determine collective-bargaining agents in the plants where they formerly worked, and to which they presumably will return when mustered out?
The problem is posed by two companies that demand voting rights in such elections for former employees now in the Armed Forces. In one case, the affected union opposes the company, and in the other the union has not been required to take a position.
NLRB’s record is against giving a general guarantee of voting rights to former employees overseas, its reason being the time element. It requires such elections to be completed within 30 days after they are ordered, and may of them are held within 15 days.
Before the war
Before the war, NLRB’s policy provided for absentee voting in collective-bargaining elections. This was changed soon after Pearl Harbor, because it was foreseen that the movement of troops overseas would complicate the receipt of ballots. Now, soldiers or sailors who happen to be in the vicinity when an election is held are allowed to take part in voting at their former place of employment, but no effort is made to send ballots even to servicemen still in this country.
The Botany Worsted Mills in New Jersey has objected to an election, held some weeks ago, on the ground that servicemen were not included. NLRB’s ruling is expected in a week or two.
Pittsburgh case
The other case has not yet reached Washington, still being before the regional board in Pittsburgh, Nicholas Unkovic, attorney for the Mine Safety Appliance Company, has said it will be carried to the U.S. Supreme Court unless a favorable decision is given by NLRB.
The company demands that its 655 employees in military service be allowed to participate, with the 2,700 now on the payroll, in an election to determine whether bargaining rights shall be won by the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (CIO). The company is also fighting to make the election company-wide, in all its 14 plants, instead of restricting it as the union desires to one plant with 200 employees at Callery, in the Pittsburgh district.
NLRB officials say there is a decided difference between political elections and collective-bargaining elections, in that public officials are elected for specific terms while in bargaining elections the result may stand only until there is a substantial change in the employer’s personnel.
A soldier coming home may find that he is “stuck” for several years with a Senator or President he doesn’t like, but if he disapproves of the union in his place of employment (and if enough others think likewise), another vote can be forced on this question.
Amos ‘n’ Andy to get along without guests
Mystic knights ‘regain control’ of program
By Si Steinhauser
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Reading Eagle (February 2, 1944)
ON THE RECORD —
Still adrift
By Dorothy Thompson
Although reluctant to belabor a point at a time when there is much to discuss, I feel compelled out of alarm and a sense of duty to return to the question of the film Lifeboat.
Whether the public as a whole shares the opinion of the hostile critics, that the film is defeatist and pours contempt upon democratic society, the past week has revealed that American opinion is certainly divided.
This week, Life devotes six full pages to stills from the film and comments:
Most people will doubtless accept Lifeboat as a good authentic account of what really happens under such circumstances… There are others, however, who profess to detect grievous sins… Their loud misgivings make it one of the most controversial movies of recent years. These critics… point out that the German submarine commander who… gets the upper hand is the only “nice guy” in the picture.
That the film is controversial is evidenced by letters to the Times apropos Mr. Crowther’s criticisms. Whereas some support the film, others share the opinion of the unfavorable critics and the most outraged of the letter-writers is a sergeant in the Armed Forces, who calls it an “example of the weasel-minded fear of clearly selling our side of the story in this worldwide war for the minds and bodies of men.”
If the controversy about the film were whether it was artistic or inartistic, or faithful to technical details of existence in a lifeboat, the matter would be unimportant. But despite the remarkably feeble excuse of the producer, Mr. MacGowan, that the film, as it were, just grew, and the theme developed as they went along, this is a political picture. The controversy in the film is between Nazism, as represented in the figure of the submarine commander, and American democracy, as represented by the other passengers in the boat. If the film creates any controversy at all over whether Nazism or American democracy is the more effective way of life, it is certainly dubious. And if some Americans think that it definitely scores up for the Nazi, its effect on an incalculable number of people, however small or however large, is that of Nazi propaganda.
But apart from its effect on domestic morale, there are other factors of serious importance. Its producers plan to export it. What will be its effect in Latin America?
On this question I have no doubt whatsoever, nor have numerous experts on Latin America with whom I have consulted. Most Latin-American countries contain great numbers of influential people who are highly prejudiced against North America. The official Nazi propaganda always refers to us as a plutodemocracy, in which the strings are pulled by a few great magnates; as a land in which the people are doped with boogie-woogie and ball games, care only for money, have no culture, and are incapable of integrated effort even in the greatest need. And this film completely supports every one of these arguments.
Just why we should be backing the Nazi description of ourselves in foreign countries is beyond my comprehension.
And imagine the effect in Britain! British visitors to America are astonished by our luxury in time of war and find it difficult to grasp the miracle of the American production system. Nearer the war and having suffered greatly, the question in their mind is: Are Americans serious about the war? And what is the state of American democracy?
Now, though the director, Mr. Hitchcock, is an Englishman, he could never have produced this film showing British passengers in this light, and gotten away with it in Britain. Compare it with Mrs. Miniver! Mrs. Miniver is a picture of an easygoing and divided society turning to a close unit and overcoming the Nazis. Lifeboat is a picture of a drifting, compassless society accepting defeat – until saved by a miracle. Is this the way we are, and the way we want to present ourselves to the world?
When I saw the film, it was followed by a newsreel featuring the face of a young American aviator who had shot down a great number of Jap planes. His face was an answer to the film. Strong, young, purposeful and humane, he, in real life, was a real American type who never could have behaved as the wretched creatures do in Lifeboat.
And since I saw the film, we have had the Army and Navy report of our prisoners of war left in the Philippines. It is a story of fortitude, endurance and pride under the most unconscionable suffering and the armies that took that were just a cross section of American men.
Pride in our country demands that we do not send this film abroad in its present form, to soil our own nest.
Völkischer Beobachter (February 3, 1944)
Der harte Kampf um die Marshallinseln
Japan verteidigt seine östliche Vorpostenstellung
vb. Wien, 2. Februar –
Mit der Eröffnung des Kampfes um die Marshallinseln hat ein neuer Abschnitt des Krieges im Pazifik begonnen. Zum erstenmal versuchen sich die Yankees an einem Punkt, der nicht zu dem von Japan in der ersten Etappe des Fernostkrieges mit raschem Zugriff eroberten Vorfeld zählt, sondern seit dem Ende des ersten Weltkriegs in der Form des Mandats zum japanischen Machtbereich gehört.
Kein Zweifel – japanische Zeitungen haben das offen ausgesprochen und auch die jüngste Erklärung des Marineministers Schimada ließ es zwischen den Zeilen durchklingen – daß im Laufe dieser Zeitspanne die Marshallinseln ganz anders ausgebaut und befestigt worden sind, als dies auf den Salomonen, auf Neupommern und den Gilbertinseln möglich war. Das zähe Ringen um diese Vorwerke Japans im Südpazifik war nur als ein Vorspiel zu bewerten, gemessen an der Bedeutung der Auseinandersetzung, die jetzt entbrannt ist.
Die Marshallinseln, die sich zwischen dem 162. und 174. Grad östlicher Länge und zwischen dem 5. und 13. Grad nördlicher Breite ausdehnen, bestehen, im Ganzen betrachtet, aus zwei Reihen von Atollen, die von Nordwesten nach Südosten verlaufen: der Rälikgruppe im Westen, der Ratakgruppe weiter östlich. Es sind insgesamt rund 350 Inseln mit zusammen etwa 400 Geviertkilometer, Nur sieben von ihnen ragen mehr als einen Meter über die höchste Flutlinie. Die Mehrzahl der Koralleneilande ist unbewohnt, und von strategischer Bedeutung sind nur die größeren Inseln, die als Stützpunkt für Luftstreitkräfte in Frage kommen. Der wichtigste Platz der ganzen Gruppe ist Dschaluit, die südliche Hauptinsel der Rälikgruppe, die auch den Hauptpfeiler der militärischen Stellung Japans auf den Marshallinseln bildet. In der Nordwestausdehnung erstreckt sich die gesamte Marshallgruppe über mehr als 1.000 Kilometer. Die gesamten Gewässer sind durch zahllose Korallenriffe für die Schifffahrt äußerst schwierig. Untiefen wechseln auf engstem Raum mit Wassertiefen zwischen 4.000 und 5.000 Meter.
Es kann als sicher gelten, daß die Yankees bereits Mitte November, als sie ihren Handstreich gegen die etwa 400 Kilometer weiter südöstlich gelegenen Gilbertinseln durchführten, den Plan hatten, im gleichen Zuge bis zu den Marshallinseln vorzustoßen. Der hartnäckige Widerstand aber, den sie bei der schwachen Besatzung von Makin und Tarawa fanden, und die gewaltigen Schiffsverluste, die sie in drei Luftseeschlachten in diesem Raume hinnehmen mußten, nötigten sie, ihre Ziele zunächst kürzer zu stecken.
Admiral Nimitz, der in diesem Abschnitt das Kommando über die Seestreitkräfte der USA führt, sah sich daher genötigt, zunächst nach der Eroberung der Gilbertinseln eine Pause von über zwei
Monaten einzuschalten, um auf den Gilbertinseln eine Absprungbasis für seine Bomber und Landjäger zu schatten. In der letzten Zeit kündigten mehrfache schwere Bombenangriffe auf die Marshallgruppe an, daß der nächste Schritt der Nimitzschen Offensive dicht bevorstand, die Japaner sind also hier durchaus nicht überrascht worden.
Wo die Yankees bei einem so weitgelagerten Ziel ansetzen würden, ließ sich freilich nicht mit Gewißheit voraussehen. Sicher war nur das eine, daß sie, getreu ihrer alten Taktik, niemals die eigentlichen Hauptziele anzugehen, Dschaluit zunächst nicht angreifen würden. Nach den Meldungen aus amerikanischer Quelle, die um 48 Stunden hinter der ersten Bekanntgabe der Japaner herhinkten, sind ihre Landungen auf den Kwadjelinninseln, im Norden der Rälikgruppe, die in sich wiederum aus einer Vielzahl von Atollen bestehen, erfolgt. Erbitterte Kämpfe sind hier im Gange. Das englische Reuters-Büro, das voreilig die Besetzung der Kwadjelinninseln durch die Amerikaner bekanntgegeben hatte, sah sich zu der „Berichtigung“ veranlaßt, die von ihm gemeldete Besetzung entspreche leider nicht den Tatsachen. Zunächst könne nur die geglückte Landung als Tatsache gelten.
An dem Landungsunternehmen sind neben starken schwimmenden Verbänden, die auch Schlachtschiffe und Flugzeugträger umfassen sollen, Landkampfeinheiten des amerikanischen Heeres und der Marine beteiligt. Die Luftwaffe der Yankees operiert nicht nur von ihren Stützpunkten auf den Gilbertinseln aus, sondern auch von Trägern. Auf eine energische Gegenwehr der Japaner dürfte sich Nimitz nach seinen Erfahrungen auf den Gilbertinseln gefaßt machen. Denn wenn auch die Marshallinseln noch über 4.000 Kilometer von Tokio entfernt und damit an sich kein strategisches Objekt von zentraler Bedeutung sind, so decken sie doch als östlicher Vorposten die Karolinengruppe, wo die japanische Schlachtflotte bei der Insel Truk ihren Hauptliegeplatz besitzen soll.
Daß die Yankees unter diesen Umständen nicht mit schnellen Erfolgen rechnen, ging sogar aus einer Erklärung Roosevelts hervor, der auf seiner täglichen Pressekonferenz über die Kämpfe auf den Marshallinseln befragt wurde. Er warne vor übertriebenem Optimismus – so schloß er seine Mitteilungen, die mit der kühnen Feststellung begonnen hatten, es sei „das Ziel der Alliierten, die Japaner aus Burma, Insulinde und der Malaiischen Halbinsel zu vertreiben, um bis nach Tokio vorzudringen.“ Also ein für ihn typisches Gemisch von Bluff und Skepsis, aus dem der Durchschnittsyankee natürlich in erster Linie die großsprecherische Ankündigung des Marsches nach Tokio heraushört – und im Hinblick auf die näherziehenden Wahlen auch heraushören soll.
Die Frage ist nur, ob er nicht durch den Verlauf der Kämpfe auf den Marshallinseln die gleiche Ernüchterung erfahren wird, die ihm der festgefahrene Inselkrieg auf Bougainville, auf Neupommern und Neuguinea ohnehin zur Genüge bereitet.
U.S. State Department (February 3, 1944)
Generalissimo Chiang to President Roosevelt
Chungking, 3 February 1944
Secret
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
I appreciate your desire to open the Ledo Road, a desire which is also my great concern since it is only thru the opening of this land route that China may quickly obtain the heavy equipment much needed by her Army. You doubtless recall that at Cairo I reiterated and emphasized the fact that I am ready to send the Yunnan troops into Burma at any moment that large scale amphibious landing operations can be effected at strategic points.
I stand ready to adhere to this decision, and hope that we can carry out operations even before November of this year, which date you mentioned as possible and probable for the diverting of the amphibious equipment to Burma.
. . . . . . . . . . . . . .
U.S. Navy Department (February 3, 1944)
CINCPAC Communiqué No. 29
Our forces have captured Namur and several adjacent islands.
Resistance continues on Kwajalein Island, but we have landed troops and mechanized equipment in force and are proceeding with the annihilation of the enemy.
Press Release
For Immediate Release
February 3, 1944
British and American destroyers account for another U-boat
Close cooperation between the British destroyer HMS CALPE (L71) and the United States destroyer USS WAINWRIGHT (DD-419) resulted in the destruction of a German U-boat recently, in the Mediterranean.
Earlier, Allied aircraft had conducted a search for 36 hours which was credited with materially hampering the submarine’s activities.
There was relative calm, after the tumult of gun battle, for at the actual sinking not a shot was fired – and the Commanding Officer of the WAINWRIGHT abandoned his plan to ram the U-boat, when he saw that it was in its death throes.
A white sea serpent was painted on either side of the German craft’s conning tower, but beyond that, there was no identification mark visible.
Cdr. Walter W. Strohbehn (USN), 36, 904 West 6th St., Davenport, Iowa, Commanding Officer of the WAINWRIGHT, reported to Adm. Ernest J. King (USN), COMINCH, that 36 hours of harassing the U-boat received from the constant air search accounted for the submarine’s slow speed and sluggish evasive maneuvers. Cdr. Strohbehn complimented the U.S. Army Air Forces for its part in keeping the submarine hampered.
The CALPE made a sound contact with the submarine at 8:16 a.m. From then on, the surface hunt went forward persistently, as eyes and ears were alert for the German craft.
About 2:47 p.m., the submarine surfaced, under the unremitting depth charge attacks by the British and U.S. destroyers. The U-boat was engaged by gunfire, but the battle waned when it was observed that the undersea craft was about to sink. The Commanding Officer of the U.S. destroyer planned to ram the submarine, but abandoned this, when it was observed that the U-boat was doomed.
The submarine sank at 3:08 p.m.
Cdr. Strohbehn wrote in his official report that it was “a pleasure to work with” the British warship. He declared:
She turned in a polished performance, always being in the proper place, always being ready and she was quick to grasp the intentions of this ship.
The Commander of the U.S. Destroyer Squadron to which the attacking U.S. vessel was attached – Capt. James P. Clay (USN), 43, 3060 Porter St., Northwest, Washington, DC – attributed the victory over the German craft to the fine teamwork between the British and U.S. warships – despite the fact that no prior joint drills had been held.
The British Admiralty officially extended its congratulations for the sinking of the enemy craft. The Commanding Officer of the CALPE was LtCdr. H. Kirkwood, RN.
VAdm. Henry K. Hewitt (USN), COMNAVNAW, likewise complimented those who took part in the destruction of the U-boat.
The Pittsburgh Press (February 3, 1944)
AMERICANS OVERRUN ATOLL
Kwajalein Japs driven into two pockets on islets
Marshalls invaders seize half of last enemy-held airfield; complete conquest may come in few hours
By William F. Tyree, United Press staff writer
Capture of Kwajalein and the remaining fortified atolls of the Marshall Islands, together with seizure of Kavieng and tottering Rabaul would place Truk, Japs’ main Pacific bastion, in the center of pincers as shown on the map.
Remnants of Jap forces on Kwajalein Atoll have been squeezed by U.S. invaders of the Marshalls into two pockets on Namur and Kwajalein Islands, at the northern and southern ends of the atoll.
Mass evacuation of Tokyo reporter
London, England (UP) –
A mass evacuation of Tokyo’s eight million residents is in full swing, in anticipation of large-scale Allied air raids on the Japanese capital, the German DNB News Agency said today in a dispatch from Tokyo.DNB said word of the evacuation came from the city’s mayor Shigeo Ōdachi, who declared “we expect air attacks and have take measures accordingly.”
A Japanese broadcast reported yesterday said the partial evacuation of Kyoto and Yokosuka had also been ordered, bringing to seven the number of Jap cities in which “depopulation measures” are being taken. The others, along with Tokyo, are Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe and Nagoya.
Pearl Harbor, Hawaii –
U.S. Marines and infantry, backed by tanks and the heaviest air and naval bombardment of the Pacific War, have seized half of the last enemy-held airfield in Kwajalein Atoll in the heart of the Marshalls and begun battles of extermination against Japanese remnants, front dispatches said today.
With the only enemy opposition in strength confined to a shrinking pocket at either end of the 66-mile-long atoll, complete conquest of Kwajalein, first pre-war Jap territory invaded by the Americans, was in sight and perhaps only a matter of hours away.
The capture of Roi Island, northern hinge of the atoll and site of its main airfield, was announced yesterday and other sources revealed that the invasion forces were occupying most of the remainder of the 90 islands and islets in the atoll as fast as they can get ashore.
Squeezed into corners
The bulk of the Jap defenders were being squeezed back into narrow corners on the only two remaining strategically-important islands in the atoll, Kwajalein and Namur, where they were hammered mercilessly by land artillery, naval batteries ranging up to 16-inch guns and blockbuster aerial bombs.
RAdm. Taneysugu Sosa, in a Tokyo propaganda broadcast apparently designed to explain away the lack of effective opposition to the U.S. landings, said Japan “does not mind if America’s invasion forces move further because in that case it can severely trounce them at one stroke at the right moment.”
Third of Kwajalein taken
Percy Finch, representing the combined Allied press aboard the joint expeditionary force flagship, reported that the Army’s 7th Infantry Division had captured one third of Kwajalein Island, at the southern tip of the atoll, by midday yesterday and driven the surviving enemy troops to stronger defense positions in the narrow eastern end.
At last reports, Mr. Finch said, the invaders had advanced halfway across the airstrip inland with the aid of newly-landed tanks.
He revealed that the Army troops had splashed ashore on Kwajalein from nearby coral islets without opposition after 5,000 tons of shells and bombs literally had pulverized defenses the Japs had built over a period of 20 years.
Concrete walls disappear
Mr. Finch said:
Two concrete beach walls and disappeared. There was no sign of massive concrete tank obstacles. Formidable pillboxes of concrete and beach coral stones had been ripped open and flattened so thoroughly that the features of the defense line built by the Japs to halt invaders were indistinguishable.
Massed artillery fire from Enubuj Islet (two miles southwest of Kwajalein) was so terrific that the islet was hidden in a cloud of smoke from the rapid-firing guns.
Kwajalein, a crescent-shaped island two and a half miles long and a third of a mile wide, was the site of the main headquarters for the atoll and controlled the southern entrance for its lagoon, the largest of its kind in the world and capable of anchoring a huge naval fleet.
Japs at the northern end of the atoll were hemmed into a corner of the northeastern beach on Namur, where the enemy had built dumps to supply the triangular airfield on adjoining Roi Island.
Mr. Finch said liquidation of the Jap pocket on Namur was expected “momentarily.”
Navy Seabees, fighter construction workers, were believed already converting the bomb and shell-battered Roi Airfield into a base for further operations in the Marshalls and perhaps attacks on Truk, Japan’s “Pearl Harbor” only 940 miles to the east.
Casualties ‘moderate’
U.S. casualties continued “moderate,” Adm. Chester W. Nimitz, commander of the Pacific Fleet, reported in his communiqué yesterday. Jap casualties were not estimated, though Adm. Nimitz revealed that several dozen prisoners had been captured on Kwajalein.
Naval observers attributed the success of the invasion to the fact that the enemy apparently had been taken by surprise and to the terrific bombardment laid down by the largest naval striking force ever assembled in any ocean.
A spokesman for Adm. Nimitz said the forces which landed on Kwajalein found the huge fires started by the naval bombardment more of an obstacle than the rifle, machine-gun and some mortar fire which they encountered inland.
Disclosure that the invasion force had suffered no naval losses was taken as a tribute to the effectiveness of the bombardment of enemy airfields and the reluctance of the Jap fleet to risk an engagement.
Raymond Clapper dies in air crash in Marshalls area
Noted columnist victim of plane collision, Navy reports
By Lyle C. Wilson, United Press staff writer
Raymond Clapper: Reporter to the last!
Ray Clapper 16th war reporter killed
New York (UP) –
Raymond Clapper was the 16th American war correspondent killed in action, the newspaper trade journal Editor & Publisher said today. A 17th correspondent is missing and 70 others have been wounded.
Washington –
Raymond Clapper, Kansas-born newspaperman who rose to distinguished position in his profession, was killed in an airplane accident in the Marshall Islands invasion, the Navy Department announced today.
Mr. Clapper, 51, was a political columnist for the Scripps-Howard papers and for many others which used his syndicated daily article, but when he died, Mr. Clapper was on the job he loved best – reporting. He left Washington Dec. 28 to see how the war was going in the Pacific. He had spent part of last year in the Mediterranean Theater.
No survivors
The Navy advised Mr. Clapper’s colleagues today that word of his death was received in a dispatch dated Feb. 3 saying that the accident involved two planes which collided over one of the Marshall Islands. The announcement said:
The Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific Fleet has reported that a plane, in which Mr. Clapper was a passenger, engaged in covering the Marshall invasions collided with another plane while forming up. Mr. Clapper was in the plane with the squadron commander. Both planes crashed in the lagoon. There were no survivors.
The dispatch did not name the men who died with Mr. Clapper.
Mr. Clapper was born in Linn County, Kansas, on May 30, 1892. He married Olive Ewing in 1913 and attended the University of Kansas from 1913 to 1916, working at any job he could find to remain in school. He is survived by Mrs. Clapper and by a daughter, Janet, 20, and a son, William Raymond, 17.
Started in Kansas City
From the University of Kansas, Clapper went directly to the Kansas City Star, shifting shortly to the United Press Association with which he remained until 1933.
During his long service with the United Press, Mr. Clapper made a reporter’s reputation for himself in Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul, New York and, finally, here in Washington. From 1923 to 1928, he was night manager and chief political writer in the UP Washington Bureau.
Im 1929, Mr. Clapper became manager of the Washington Bureau, a position he held until he joined The Washington Post in 1933 as a special writer.
From the Post, Mr. Clapper in 1936 went to the Scripps-Howard papers as a political columnist. He capped his career with that nationally-syndicated column which has been voted by the newspapermen here as their first choice. That led Mr. Clapper to the radio and his voice, too, became familiar to millions. But that was a sideline always. It was as a newspaperman that he was and wanted to be known.
Here Mr. Clapper became a notable figure in journalism. Through his years with the United Press, the Post and finally the Scripps-Howard papers, he established and maintained a remarkable association with the great political figures and later with the military leaders of our times. He was assigned here during the latter part of Woodrow Wilson’s second administration and was on the job with Harding, Coolidge, Hoover and thus far with President Roosevelt.
Honor to his profession
From the Harding “front porch” campaign through the Scope “Monkey Trial,” the oil scandals, naval conferences, the political conventions, First, Second and Third New Deal, the war – Mr. Clapper covered them all, always adding distinction to himself and to his profession.
Mr. Clapper’s colleagues were remembering things about him today in the offices where he had worked and was so well known. The purple burst of profanity when things went wrong and the quick soft word of apology a moment after. There was the time he sat for some 13 hours dictating a running story for the United Press from the press box of the 1932 Democratic National Convention and could not be persuaded to leave his chair.
Shirt sleeve journalist
He was essentially a shirt sleeve journalist, although the country boy from Kansas did become a polished, cosmopolitan figure. He lived in one of the most emphatically modernistic homes in Washington.
He made three wartime roundtrip transatlantic flights, but had got his first taste of foreign reporting at the 1930 London Naval Conference. His first wartime journey was to England before Pearl Harbor.
Shortly after we got into the war, Mr. Clapper flew to Cairo, Calcutta and Chungking. Last year, he visited and reported in his column upon conditions in Sweden, England, Africa and Sicily. That was when he flew to observe the bombing of Rome.
Not a fatalist
It was a tribute to Mr. Clapper and the other reporters invited on that delicate mission that the Army chose them because it wanted trained, reputable and non-military witnesses to the fact that only military installations were attacked. Mr. Clapper fitted the pattern. He was known around town as a top flight reporter and his report on Rome was a sample of his wares.
Mr. Clapper probably was no fatalist, but he did have a comforting confidence in his star. It is a long way from Linn County to the places he had been, and Clapper figured there were plenty of places still inviting a look. He also knew that war corresponding may be a dangerous job.
On Jan. 26, in a column dated somewhere in New Guinea, Mr. Clapper wrote a few words which were, of course, intended more as reassurance to his family than for his public.
He wrote:
Just about every individual has some religious charm or other good luck token. I’m not a religious man, but I find myself frequently taking out a tiny brown bear which my daughter gave me as I was leaving last year for the European Theater. Over here seven war correspondents have been killed, mostly in the last few months, and I never get in a plane anymore without checking with the little brown bear.
Mr. Clapper figured that since the summer of 1941 when he visited England, he had flown more than 100,000 miles and crossed the Atlantic by air six times. He was proud to be a veteran war correspondent, having switched easily from politics to the greater story.
As the war tides rose, Mr. Clapper wrote less politics and more war. He carried an early-issue war correspondent’s credential, a little green card dated Feb. 28, 1942.
Early on the job
That meant that Mr. Clapper characteristically had been early on the job of telling his public – especially the Midwest which he loved best – about the biggest story going at the time.
Ernie Pyle was one of Mr. Clapper’s most enthusiastic admirers and he writes better than any of Clapper’s other friends, too. In November 1940, Ernie started his daily piece this way:
This is a column about Ray Clapper. I am writing it because I consider him the outstanding columnist of 1940. You who read him know that his sincerity projects itself outward from the printed page into your consciousness, yet sincerity is hardly the word anymore. Somehow, its meaning has changed these last few years. We grant sincerity to too many people we don’t like.
Clapper’s sincerity is something else. I have searched my head in vain for a way to describe it and then last night Mrs. Clapper put into four words what I was trying to say about her husband – “He isn’t selling anything,” she said.
Ernie added, “That’s it, exactly.”
The men and women who know Mr. Clapper’s work best will echo: “That was it.”
McFarland: Clapper insisted on first-hand view
By Kermit McFarland
Raymond Clapper lost his life because he was forever insisting on seeing things for himself.
As a commentator whose job was to write a daily column of opinion and analysis, Mr. Clapper easily could have followed the practice of basing his writings on voluminous reading.
But he wanted to get all his information firsthand.
On fourth trip
This was his fourth trip overseas since the war broke out. He went to England in 1941 to learn from experience what the Nazi air blitz of London was like. He flew to Africa, India and China early in 1942 to talk personally with the leading military and political figures. He was back in the European war zones last year, visiting Sweden, Great Britain, North Africa and Sicily.
It was on this last trip that he flew over Rome in a U.S. bomber at the time of the first bombing of that city.
Visited combat areas
Having seen a great deal of the war in Europe and even in China, Mr. Clapper, shortly before Christmas, decided he needed to see the war in the Pacific to get a full picture.
He left by air late in December and within a few days was visiting the actual combat areas in New Guinea and New Britain on Navy planes and ships.
Ray Clapper was always on the go. When he wasn’t hopping off to foreign points, he was making innumerable trips around his own country. He visited dozens of war plants to see how the tools of war were made. He went to training camps and arsenals, he interviewed military authorities, high and low, workmen, plant executives.
A good listener, too
An easy mixer, Mr. Clapper was possessed of an exceptional talent as a listener. To get a few basic facts, he would listen patiently to the most extraneous conversation, breaking his own silence only to ask pertinent questions.
Ray never went out to hear just what there was to be heard. He went to find out what he wanted to know. And what he wanted to know was not only what was going on, but why and how and what would be the long-run results. Everything he learned about the war in his extensive travels he looked at for its overall effect, not only on the outcome of the war itself but on the post-war world.
A ‘thinking columnist’
I don’t think Ray Clapper was ever obsessed with any special philosophy or policy, but he was obsessed with a terrific eagerness for news, basic news, and when he found it, he analyzed it in terms of what it meant to America.
Mr. Clapper was the acknowledged leader among the “thinking” columnists of the nation. He was, as several writers have said, a “newspaperman’s newspaperman.”
He has probably been “written up” by more writers in his own field than any other working newspaperman.
Ernie finds word for it
The esteem in which he was held in his own profession was probably best summed up by Ernie Pyle, who said he had searched his head in vain for a way to describe Mr. Clapper’s sincerity.
He seems to weigh his subjects each day, not out of some divine power to see better than other men, but out of old-fashioned horse sense.
His penchant for keeping abreast of events, if not actually ahead of them, frequently caused him to change his opinions.
He once said:
I try to learn from events. Events have not been consistent, so why should I?
Often violently criticized
This often drew violent criticism from those of his readers who were set in their thinking, but in the long run it was one of his chief assets.
Mr. Clapper’s daily column appeared in more than 180 newspapers.
His success as a columnist did not develop from any spectacular writing or sudden sensations. He became internationally famous the hard way.
Not spectacular writer
Mr. Clapper began writing a daily political column about 10 years ago, quitting his job as chief of the Washington Bureau of the United Press to work for The Washington Post, which had just been purchased by Eugene Meyer.
In less than two years, however, he joined the Scripps-Howard papers and began writing the column which has been appearing in The Pittsburgh Press ever since.
It wasn’t long until the United Feature Syndicate purchased rights to the column. It didn’t sell too well at first because, as one writer put it, “the success of Clapper is the triumph of the solid, unspectacular man.”
Clapper visited here in November
Raymond Clapper visited Pittsburgh a number of times, and had many personal friends here.
His last visit was in November, when he came here with his wife, who sponsored an LST at a launching ceremony at the shipyard of the American Bridge Company in Ambridge.
On that visit, he inspected Pittsburgh district war plants and wrote several columns on them.
The year before, in September, he spoke at a United War Fund rally in Syria Mosque.
As a political reporter, he came to this area in several tours of the country designed to determine public sentiment, and also accompanying various candidates on tour. He was a member of the party which visited West Middlesex with Governor Alf M. Landon in 1936.
Mrs. Clapper, a lecturer in her own right, addressed the Democratic Women’s Guild here in October 1942.
YANKS HIT U-BOAT BASE
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By Phil Ault, United Press staff writer
…
Yanks filter into Cassino, now almost surrounded
Forces below Rome extend beachhead despite increasingly heavy counterattacks by enemy
By C. R. Cunningham, United Press staff writer
…
Rout in New Guinea –
Aussies chase starving Japs
Jaws of Allied trap closing on disorganized foe
By Don Caswell, United Press staff writer
…